qu'on oblige.”
“Can you tell me if there is a moon to-night?” Mrs. Vansittart asked a porter in the railway station at The Hague.
The man stared at her for a moment, then realized that the question was a serious one.
“I will ask one of the engine-drivers, my lady,” he answered, with his hand at the peak of his cap.
It was past nine o'clock, and Mrs. Vansittart had been waiting nearly half an hour for the Flushing train. Her carriage was walking slowly up and down beneath the glass roof of the entrance to the railway station. She had taken a ticket in order to gain access to the platform, and was almost alone there with the porters. Her glance travelled backwards2 and forwards between the clock and the western sky, visible beneath the great arch of the station. The evening was a clear one, for the month of June still lingered, but the twilight3 was at hand. The Flushing train was late to-night of all nights; and Mrs. Vansittart stamped her foot with impatience4. What was worse was Dorothy Roden's lateness. Dorothy and Mrs. Vansittart, like two generals on the eve of a battle, had been exchanging hurried notes all day; and Dorothy had promised to meet Mrs. Vansittart at the station on the arrival of the train.
“The moon is rising now, my lady—a half-moon,” said the porter approaching with that leisureliness5 which characterizes railway porters between trains.
“Why does your stupid train not come?” asked Mrs. Vansittart, with unreasoning anger.
“It has been signalled, my lady; a few minutes now.”
Mrs. Vansittart gave a quick sigh of relief, and turned on her heel. She had long been unable to remain quietly in one place. She saw Dorothy coming up the slope to the platform. At last matters were taking a turn for the better—except, indeed, Dorothy's face, which was set and white.
“I have found out something,” she said at once, and speaking quickly but steadily6. “It is for to-night, between half-past nine and ten.”
“I have secured Uncle Ben,” she said—all the ridicule8 of the name seemed to have vanished long ago. “He is drunk, and therefore cunning. It is only when he is sober that he is stupid. I have him in a cab downstairs, and have told your man to watch him. I have been to Mr. Cornish's rooms again, and he has not come in. He has not been in since morning, and they do not know where he is. No one knows where he is.”
Dorothy's lip quivered for a moment, and she held it with her teeth. Mrs. Vansittart touched her arm lightly with her gloved fingers—a strange, quick, woman's gesture.
“I went upstairs to his rooms,” continued Dorothy. “It is no good thinking of etiquette9 now or pretending——”
“No,” said Mrs. Vansittart, hurriedly, so that the sentence was never finished.
“I found nothing except two torn envelopes in the waste-paper basket. One in an uneducated hand—perhaps feigned10. The other was Otto von Holzen's writing.”
“Ah! In Otto von Holzen's writing—addressed to Tony at the Zwaan at Scheveningen?”
“Yes.”
“Then Otto von Holzen knows where Tony is staying, at all events. We have learnt something. You have kept the envelopes?”
“Yes.”
They both turned at the rumble11 of the train outside the station. The great engine came clanking in over the points, its lamp glaring like the eye of some monster.
“Provided Major White is in the train,” muttered Mrs. Vansittart, tapping on the pavement with her foot. “If he is not in the train, Dorothy?”
“Then we must go alone.”
Mrs. Vansittart turned and looked her slowly up and down.
“You are a brave woman,” she said thoughtfully.
But Major White was in the train, being a man of his word in small things as well as in great. They saw him pushing his way patiently through the crowd of hotel porters and others who had advice or their services to offer him. Then he saw Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy, and recognized them.
“Give your luggage ticket to the hotel porter and let him take it straight to the hotel. You are wanted elsewhere.”
Still Major White was only in his normal condition of mild and patient surprise. He had only met Mrs. Vansittart once, and Dorothy as often. He did exactly as he was told without asking one of those hundred questions which would inevitably12 have been asked by many men and more women under such circumstances, and followed the ladies out of the crowd.
“We must talk here,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “One cannot do so in a carriage in the streets of The Hague.”
Major White bowed gravely, and looked from one to the other. He was rather travel-worn, and seemed to be feeling the heat.
“Tony Cornish has probably written to you about his discoveries as to the malgamite works. We have no time to go into that question, however,” said Mrs. Vansittart, who was already beginning to be impatient with this placid13 man. “He has earned the enmity of Otto von Holzen—a man who will stop at nothing—and the malgamiters are being raised against him by Von Holzen. Our information is very vague, but we are almost certain that an attempt is to be made on Tony's life to-night between half-past nine and ten. You understand?” Mrs. Vansittart almost stamped her foot.
“Oh yes,” answered White, looking at the station clock. “Twenty minutes' time.”
“We have the information from one of the malgamiters themselves, who knows the time and the place, but he is tipsy. He is in a carriage outside the station.”
“How can we tell you that?” snapped Mrs. Vansittart; and Major White dropped his glass from his eye.
“Where is your brother?” he said, turning to Dorothy. He was evidently rather afraid of Mrs. Vansittart, as a quick-spoken person not likely to have patience with a slow man.
“He has gone to Utrecht,” answered Dorothy. “And Mr. von Holzen is not at the works, which are locked up. I have just come from there. By a lucky chance I met this man Ben, and have brought him here.”
White looked at Dorothy thoughtfully, and something in his gaze made her change colour.
“Let me see this man,” he said, moving towards the exit.
“He is in that carriage,” said Dorothy, when they had reached a quiet corner of the station yard. “You must be quick. We have only a quarter of an hour now. He is an Englishman.”
White got into the cab with Uncle Ben, who appeared to be sleeping, and closed the door after him. In a few moments he emerged again.
“Tell the man to drive to a chemist's,” he said to Mrs. Vansittart. “The fellow is not so bad. I have got something out of him, and will get more. Follow in your carriage—you and Miss Roden.”
It was Major White's turn now to take the lead, and Mrs. Vansittart meekly15 obeyed, though White's movements were so leisurely16 as to madden her.
At the chemist's shop, White descended17 from the carriage and appeared to have some language in common with the druggist, for he presently returned to the carriage, carrying a tumbler. After a moment he went to the window of Mrs. Vansittart's neat brougham.
“I must bring him in here,” he said. “You have a pair of horses which look as if they could go. Tell your man to drive to the pumping-station on the Dunes18, wherever that may be.”
Then he went and fetched Uncle Ben, whom he brought by one arm, in a dislocated condition, trotting20 feebly to keep pace with the major's long stride.
Mrs. Vansittart's coachman must have received very decided22 orders, for he skirted the town at a rattling23 trot21, and soon emerged from the streets into the quiet of the Wood, which was dark and deserted24. Here, in a sandy and lonely alley25, he put the horses to a gallop26. The carriage swayed and bumped. Those inside exchanged no words. From time to time Major White shook Uncle Ben, which seemed to be a part of his strenuous27 treatment.
At length the carriage stopped on the narrow road, paved with the little bricks they make at Gouda, that leads from Scheveningen to the pumping-station on the Dunes. Major White was the first to quit it, dragging Uncle Ben unceremoniously after him. Then, with his disengaged hand, he helped the ladies. He screwed his glass tightly into his eye, and looked round him with a measuring glance.
“This place will be as light as day,” he said, “when the moon rises from behind those trees.”
He drew Uncle Ben aside, and talked with him for some time in a low voice. The man was almost sober now, but so weak that he could not stand without assistance. Major White was an advocate, it seemed, of heroic measures. He appeared to be asking many questions, for Uncle Ben pointed28 from time to time with an unsteady hand into the darkness. When his mind, muddled29 with malgamite and drink, failed to rise to the occasion, Major White shook him like a sack. After a few minutes' conversation, Ben broke down completely, and sat against a sand-bank to weep. Major White left him there, and went towards the ladies.
“Will you tell your man,” he said to Mrs. Vansittart, “to drive back to the junction30 of the two roads and wait there under the trees?” He paused, looking dubiously31 from one to the other. “And you and Miss Roden had better go back with him and stay in the carriage.”
“No,” said Dorothy, quietly.
“Oh no!” added Mrs. Vansittart.
And Major White moistened his lips with an air of patient toleration for the ways of a sex which had ever been far beyond his comprehension.
“It seems,” he said, when the carriage had rolled away over the noisy stones, “that we are in good time. They do not expect him until nearly ten. He has been attempting for some time to get the men to refuse to work, and these same men have written to ask him to meet them at the works at ten o'clock, when Roden is at Utrecht, and Von Holzen is out. There is no question of reaching the works at all. They are going to lie in ambush32 in a hollow of the Dunes, and knock him on the head about half a mile from here north-east.” And Major White paused in this great conversational33 effort to consult a small gold compass attached to his watch-chain.
The two women waited patiently.
“Fine place, these Dunes,” said the major, after a pause. “Could conceal34 three thousand men between here and Scheveningen.”
“But it is not a question of hiding soldiers,” said Mrs. Vansittart, sharply, with a movement of the head indicative of supreme35 contempt.
“No,” admitted White. “Better hide ourselves, perhaps. No good standing36 here where everybody can see us. I'll fetch our friend. Think he'll sleep if we let him. Chemist gave him enough to kill a horse.”
“But haven't you any plans?” asked Mrs. Vansittart, in despair. “What are you going to do? You are not going to let these brutes37 kill Tony Cornish? Surely you, as a soldier, must know how to meet this crisis.”
“Oh yes. Not much of a soldier, you know,” answered White, soothingly38, as he moved away towards Uncle Ben. “But I think I know how this business ought to be managed. Come along—hide ourselves.”
He led the way across the dunes, dragging Uncle Ben by one arm, and keeping in the hollows. The two women followed in silence on the silent sand.
Once Major White paused and looked back. “Don't talk,” he said, holding up a large fat hand in a ridiculous gesture of warning, which he must have learnt in the nursery. He looked like a large baby listening for a bogey39 in the chimney.
Once or twice he consulted Uncle Ben, and as often glanced at his compass. There was a certain skill in his attitude and demeanour, as if he knew exactly what he was about. Mrs. Vansittart had a hundred questions to ask him, but they died on her lips. The moon rose suddenly over the distant trees and flooded all the sand-hills with light. Major White halted his little party in a deep hollow, and consulted Uncle Ben in whispers. Then bidding him sit down, he left the three alone in their hiding-place, and went away by himself. He climbed almost to the summit of a neighbouring mound40, and stopped suddenly, with his face uplifted, as if smelling something. Like many short-sighted persons, he had a keen scent41. In a few minutes he came back again.
“I have found them,” he whispered to Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy. “Smelt 'em—like sealing-wax. Eleven of them—waiting there for Cornish.” And he smiled with a sort of boyish glee.
“What are you going to do?” whispered Mrs. Vansittart.
“Thump them,” he answered, and presently went back to his post of observation.
Uncle Ben had fallen asleep, and the two women stood side by side waiting in the moonlight. It was chilly42, and a keen wind swept in from the sea. Dorothy shivered. They could hear certain notes of certain instruments in the band of the Scheveningen Kurhaus, nearly two miles away. It was strange to be within sound of such evidences of civilization, and yet in such a lonely spot—strange to reflect that eleven men were waiting within a few yards of them to murder one. And yet they could safely have carried out their intention, and have scraped a hole in the sand to hide his body, in the certainty that it would never be found; for these dunes are a miniature desert of Sahara, where nothing bids men leave the beaten paths, where certain hollows have probably never been trodden by the foot of man, and where the ever-drifting sand slowly accumulates—a very abomination of desolation.
At length White rose to his feet agilely43 enough, and crept to the brow of the dune19. The men were evidently moving. Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy ascended44 the bank to the spot just vacated by White.
Only a few dozen yards away they could see the black forms of the malgamiters grouped together under the covert45 of a low hillock. Hidden from their sight, Major White was slowly stalking them.
Dorothy touched Mrs. Vansittart's arm, and pointed silently in the direction of Scheveningen. A man was approaching, alone, across the silvery sand-hills. It was Tony Cornish, walking into the trap laid for him.
Major White saw him also, and thinking himself unobserved, or from mere46 habit acquired among his men, he moistened the tips of his fingers at his lips.
The malgamiters moved forward, and White followed them. They took up a position in a hollow a few yards away from the foot-path by which Cornish must pass. One of their number remained behind, crouching47 on a mound, and evidently reporting progress to his companions below. When Cornish was within a hundred yards of the ambush, White suddenly ran up the bank, and lifting this man bodily, threw him down among his comrades. He followed this vigorous attack by charging down into the confused mass. In a few moments the malgamiters streamed away across the sand-hills like a pack of hounds, though pursued and not pursuing. They left some of their number on the sand behind them, for White was a hard hitter.
“Give it to them, Tony!” White cried, with a ring of exultation48 in his voice. “Knock 'em down as they come!”
For there was only one path, and the malgamiters had to run the gauntlet of Tony Cornish, who knocked some of them over neatly49 enough as they passed, selecting the big ones, and letting the others go free. He knew them by the smell of their clothes, and guessed their intention readily enough.
It was a strange scene, and one that left the two women, watching it, breathless and eager.
They hurried toward Cornish and White, who were now alone on the path. White had rolled up his sleeve, and was tying his handkerchief round his arm with his other hand and his teeth.
“It is nothing,” he said. “One of the devils had a knife. Must get my sleeve mended to-morrow.”
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1
par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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leisureliness
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| n.悠然，从容 | |
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6
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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7
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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8
ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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18
dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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dune
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| n.(由风吹积而成的)沙丘 | |
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20
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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bogey
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| n.令人谈之变色之物；妖怪，幽灵 | |
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40
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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42
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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43
agilely
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| adv.敏捷地 | |
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44
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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46
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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47
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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48
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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49
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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50
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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